Day 8: Creglingen to Donauworth:

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We packed up our stuff, ate our final breakfast in Creglingen, loaded the car, and headed out. We had decided to stop in a few places between Creglingen and our next layover in Donauworth. Our first stop was in Schillingsfurst. I had originally told Manoli this town probably wasn't worth stopping in since it had so few sights, but when she noticed it had a castle, she wanted to stop there. Schillingsfurst is a fairly small town, even by our recent standards. Since we had no information to speak of, much less a map, I'd put the location of the Tourist Information Center in the car's GPS. When we were more or less there, Manoli noticed a good looking place to park which was also near the sign that said Rathaus or City Hall. This is often where the Tourist Information Center is. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case in this town. We walked up the hill on the street with the Rathaus sign, and saw an very fancy building that turned out to be the Stadt Schillingsfurst. I didn't think this was the Rathaus at the time, and still am not sure, since nearby signs seemed to disagree about where it was. It was a very pretty building though, and the Evangelische Kirche St. Kilian was right next door. After Manoli looked around inside, we headed downhill to the markzplatz, encountering another church, the Kirche Schillingsfürst. Also, right next to it was the little Tourist Information Center, which unfortunately didn't open on Mondays! Well, not knowing what else to see or how to find it, we decided we could at least find the castle or Schloss Schillingsfurst. We followed the signs on the main roads and did eventually get there, but found out later we could have reached it a lot easier and quicker if only we'd know, or had a map. Along the way, we saw the Wasserturm which is shown in many photos of Schillingsfurst, then finally reached the castle. Unfortunately again, just like the Tourist Information Center, the castle was closed on Mondays! Oh well. We walked around outside the grounds to see what we could see, but as you can tell from the photo, it not much too look at. We'd past the SchlossCafe along the way, so we stopped there to admire the views of the town below, and enjoy a cappuccino. Afterwards, we quickly found the quick and easy way back down to the car, and headed to our next stop in Feuchtwangen.

We found Feuchtwangen easily enough, but just as we entered town, we ran into construction on the street the GPS was sending on to reach the marktplatz. I did my best to figure out where and when to turn in order to be close the square. Manoli noticed an empty free parking place so I pulled in and went by foot to see how close to the square we were, and if there was good parking there. It turned out we had parked only a few blocks from the square, and there was limited pay parking there, so I went back to the car, maneuvered it in tight to the wall and parking spot outline. When we walked back to the square, I was found a map of the area and the Tourist Information Center, which turned out to be something like 10 feet away from the map. This one was open, so we went inside, found a good map and started our short walking tour of Feuchtwangen. The buildings on the marktplatz were all pretty cool, with a large, fancy church at one end and a medium sized fountain called the Rohrenbrunnen at the other. It turned out that there were two churches side by side at that end of the marktplatz, the Stiftskirche, and the Johanniskirche. Manoli checked them both out while I explored nearby. Right near the churches was a 12th century remnant of a cloister called the Kreuzgang. Local groups use this are to stage plays and such, and there were a number of relics on one side of the small "patio".

We continued our small walking tour, reaching the only remaining gate of the three originals, the Oberes Tor. Nearby was a small but interesting fountain called the Taubenbrunnlein or Dove Fountain. We ended up back at the markzplatz, then headed back to our car to continue our trip, this time to Dinklsbuhl. We had no trouble finding the town, using the car's navigation system. As we entered town, we noticed a parking area just outside the gate, but kept going, trying to be sure we were as close as possible to the marktplatz. We ended up more or less making a U-turn and going back out the same city gate and parking in a nice large parking area just outside the walls. Throughout the parking area there were signs having to do with parking, and since we couldn't read German very well, we sort of took a chance. I assumed from the use of dates start Friday at noon and ending Sunday at 8pm that the parking was restricted during some weekend festival, so I felt pretty safe parking there. We took a nice pathway through a park and through the walls using a small pedestrian gate. It was pretty easy to find the Tourist Information Center. It was getting to be lunch time, and on our way to the information center we'd spotted a decent looking bakery/cafe called the Brothaus Cafe & Bakery, so after grabbing a map to peruse, we walked back there and had our lunch. Manoli had a tasty sandwich and I ordered a slice of what looked like cheese, egg and meat, along with an apple pastry (strudel I think). The slice I had turned out to be eggs, cheese and a layer of liverwurst on the bottom. Quite delicious, and the apple strudel was very good too.

After lunch, and a bit of orienteering using our map, we started our walking tour of Dinkelsbuhl and its many towers and gates. I guess this town was famous for them, because there must have been 5 or 6 gates and over a dozen towers. We passed near most of them and took photos of quite a few. Dinkelsbuhl also had multiple churches, as usual, including the St. Paulskirche Karmeliter-Kloster and the Munster St. Georg, both of which were quite old and ornate. Manoli had originally been excited that Dinkelsbuhl had a castle, but I'd told her I seemed to remember it was more a palace than a castle. Sure enough, when we finally found it, it was basically just a large building or small castle called the Castle of Teutonic Order or Deutschordenschloss. We didn't bother trying to get in, and just continued our walking tour of the wall and its many towers. We reached the southern most gate called the Nordlinger Tor. Next to the tower were a set of stairs you could climb to see the town from a decent altitude. After a few photos, we climbed back down, got ourselves oriented towards where our car was parked (after some trial and error), and headed out of Dinkelsbuhl towards our next hostel stop in Donauworth.

As we left town, following the GPS directions, we ran into a detour. It took several tries and several different routes to finally get back on the road to Donauworth, about 60 kilometers from Dinkelsbuhl. Our car's navigation system took us properly right to the DJH hostel. It is located on the outskirts of town, right next to what they call a Gymnasium, but from the size of the building, or should I say buildings, it has to be a lot more than just a gymnasium. I'm assuming it is some sort of sports convention center and or school. When we arrived the place, along with the hostel, was pretty empty, but the receptionist told us the gymnasium was opening tomorrow after having been closed all summer, and expected a lot more people to be around. After finding our nice private double room (bunk beds, not a double bed) with our own complete bathroom, we headed down into town to eat dinner. We wandered around a bit until we decided to try the Lotus Chinese Restaurant. Originally, from the sign outside, I'd decided to do there all-you-can-eat buffet at 8.90 Euros and Manoli would have soup. It turned out the buffet was 8.90 for lunch, but 12.30 for dinner, so I ordered a chicken dish that sounded good for 9 Euros and Manoli asked for a "large" bowl of won ton soup. The soup was very good and hot, according to Manoli, but ended up costing us 9.30 Euros! Oh well, live and learn. After dinner we walked back up to the hostel and settled in for the night.

Tomorrow we plan on taking it easy, and probably just seeing some of the sights in Donauworth.

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